One of the highlights of three years in the Bay Area was making a film for a group of cooperative bakeries that were trying to be a “democracy demonstration project”.
Cut to the chase! You can watch the film here.
Yes. Their cookies and scones and pizza are amazing. But the cooperatives also pay more than 150 people a good wage to bake for a living. In an age when companies like Basecamp are banning the discussion of politics by staff, and Texan politicians are telling corporations who care about voting rights, “your woke money is no good here”, it’s surprising how the people we met show the benefits of adopting a more revolutionary corporate structure. You can literally just see it in their smiling faces.
Making the film convinced me that freelancing was worthwhile. I shot it with a filmmaking partner over evenings, early mornings and weekends while balancing a day job at Clean Water Action in downtown Oakland. On top of solving the state’s drinking water crisis during the day, it was stimulating and engaging to be meeting so many interesting and vital people in my spare time, and to figure out how to weave such a complex history and culture down into a five-minute film.
The project shows me at my best, too, I think, in that if you give me a challenging brief, I’ll go out and find the people to tell your story in an engaging way. I’ll problem solve and deliver above your expectations on an ambitious timeline. And you’ll have something that lives on for the years to come.
Founded in Berkeley by a study group who’d looked at why cooperatives were more successful in Europe, the Arizmendi Association likes to serve great food, and then encourage its customers to reflect a little bit. As one cooperative worker said, “I like to think that we’re winning them over with milk and cookies, and then also serving up a little bit of politics on the side.”
I’m so lucky to have work I love and I hope that you can find that for yourself, too. Here’s to winning them over with milk and cookies, whatever that looks like in your life.
